Читать книгу Seeking God with Saint John Henry Newman - Ryan J. Marr - Страница 8

One final caveat: As you read this book, it’s essential that you be regularly engaged in the practice of prayer, if you are not so engaged already. In one of his sermons, Newman remarks that prayer is to the spiritual life what the beating of the heart is to the life of the body. Reading about holiness without consistently turning to God in prayer is like trying to travel somewhere in a vehicle that has no fuel in it. Spiritual reading, on its own, will get you nowhere. We must be persons of prayer!

If you long for a deeper prayer life but are not sure where to begin, a great resource is Newman’s Meditations and Devotions, a collection of devotional reflections and prayers that were culled from his personal papers after he died.¹⁵ This thin volume packs a powerful punch and will help you to experience for yourself the very spiritual insights that we will be discussing from Newman’s sermons. As we begin this journey together, please know that I am praying for you, confident as well that Newman is praying for all of us who are still traveling “along the way.” In closing, then, I offer the following prayer by Newman as a benediction for the journey that lies ahead of us:

But for us, let us glory in what [the children of this age] disown; let us beg of our Divine Lord to take to Him His great power, and manifest Himself more and more, and reign both in our hearts and in the world. Let us beg of Him to stand by us in trouble, and guide us on our dangerous way. May He, as of old, choose “the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty!” May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last! [Amen.]¹⁶